While none of the other members of the Standard Oil Company examined in 1879 was quite so sweeping in his denials, all of them evaded direct answers. The reason they gave for this evasion was that the investigations were an interference with their rights as private citizens, and that the government had no business to inquire into their methods. Consequently when asked questions they refused to answer “by advice of counsel.” Ultimately the gentlemen did answer a great many questions. But taking the testimony all in all through these years it certainly is a mild characterisation to say that it totally lacks in frankness. The testimony of the Standard officials before the Hepburn Commission was so evasive that the committee in making its report spoke bitterly of the company as “a mysterious organisation whose business and transactions are of such a character that its members decline giving a history or description of it lest this testimony be used to convict them of a crime.” The producers certainly were right in claiming that secrecy was a characteristic of the Standard as it had been of the South Improvement Company. The new Standard Combination, like the South Improvement Company, aimed at controlling the entire refining interest. “The coal-oil business belongs to us,” Mr. Rockefeller once told a recalcitrant refiner. His associates were saying the same on all sides; “the object of the Standard Oil Company is to secure the entire refining business of the world,” a member of the concern told B. F. Nye, an Ohio producer.[76]